


not that thing in my chest

by safeandsound13



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, an au in which b + c actually have meaningful conversation, i know so wild, mentions of spacebarfkru and mini l3x@
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 08:26:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16971156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safeandsound13/pseuds/safeandsound13
Summary: Finally, Bellamy snaps, cutting her off. His face is hard, completely unreadable. His voice shakes just slightly, one hand hovering in the air like he's afraid he might have to reach out and keep her in place, like she might start running at the admission. "I thought you were dead.""So did I!" She defends herself, her voice raw and exasperated, taken back for a second. Her pulse's a gallop. She doesn’t know why he wants to do this now, dig this back up when she buried it so deep for a reason. And anger is easy, anger she can do, has been doing for the past two weeks."You didn’t know if we were alive,” he growls, but it's without any real heat. A bead of sweat trails down his temple. His voice cracks when he adds, rough, “There's a difference."// or: a continuation of the show the 100 after it's s4 cancellation—if some type of mineworkers (ugh my mind) came down and Clarke couldn't quite stand being around Bellamy after six years and the tension just keeps building until they finally Talk™ (i knoooow bold concept)—in the form of a drabble





	not that thing in my chest

**Author's Note:**

> i dont have money for therapy so instead im channelling all my frustration and anger into this lil drabble i started before the 666 got cancelled after s4, about a hypothetical s5 :) dont take it too seriously this is me trying to compensate for the fact i feel like a fraud for never writing canon fics. 
> 
> anyway: tl;dr: felt angsty might delete later x 
> 
> song in title: this feeling by kelsea ballerini (KWEEN!) and two basic white boys who i shall not name

“Clarke.”

She keeps walking, pulling her hair up into a small ponytail to cool off her warm skin a little. The temperature’s been rising to unprecedented heights the last few weeks, and all she could do was hope that mother earth wasn’t building up to her third apocalypse. It's not like they didn't deserve it.

“ _Clarke_!”

His voice sounds closer now, and she comes to a halt, shoulders stiffened. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath through her nose as she waits for him to close the final few feet between them. It was getting harder to pretend everything was normal with each exchange of words they had. After the group meeting they just had, she _definitely_ wasn’t in the mood. She could hide, or keep running, but eventually he would step right into one of the Louwada klironkru’s traps and lose a foot, or his life. She was angry with him, but not _that_ angry.

His hand comes up to wrap around her shoulder, and involuntarily, she jerks away. When she turns, she sends him an apologetic glance but he looks almost betrayed, looking down at his own hand as if she burned him.

“What the hell was that, Bellamy?” She snaps, because she wants all of it to stop. The weird unfamiliar tension between them, the strange lingering looks from across the room, the unspoken words no one wants to say. “Last time I checked, this is still _my_ valley and your people are just guests.” She almost chokes on the words, doesn’t quite mean for them to sound so ugly, almost vindictive, but she can’t help it. That meeting wasn’t a meeting, it was a cross-examination. Five, six people ganging up on her and reminding her once again she wasn’t part of them. She used to be, but not anymore. They were friends, sure, and they would want her to survive, even, but they would no longer die for her, not like they once would have. It's a bitter pill to swallow.

It’s been barely two weeks since they came down. The only reason the miners didn’t slay them at first sight is because Clarke promised them food. Food they don’t have. Which, Clarke is _well_ aware of. She’d been watching the miners from a distance for weeks, analyzing their every move, coming up with the most effective plan to wipe them all out. Even though Bellamy—he doesn’t even seem to care that this valley is all they have. The miners are the only way to the bunker, to his sister, and apparently that’s all that matters. Matters more than the fact this is Clarke and Madi’s home.

“I’m sure you feel threatened right now, but—” He starts, and she can’t quite fucking believe this.

She exhales sharply, starting to stalk away from him again. He follows her. Because he follows her, she gives him the courtesy of debunking his argument out loud. “We can’t let them have their way! This valley can barely sustain the hundred people in it right now, with the way they’re acting. What happens when they bring the rest of them down?”

“We have to share. For now. What do you think is going to happen if all seven of us go up against the hundred of them?” He huffs, voice gruff as he adjusts the strap of his rifle on his shoulder. “Nothing good, princess.” It slips out just like that, and even he seems surprised. Her face snaps to his, and his eyes soften, reminiscent almost, so she quickly looks away, straight back ahead. It's harder, to do this, if she has to remember all the memories of who they used to be to each other.

He clears his throat, awkwardly, and she speeds up, so he falls a step behind her and she won't have to look at him. His footsteps are heavy, falling in line with each irregular beat of her heart. “Look, Raven and Emori are working their asses off to give us some leverage in case they start demanding their share of the rations sooner than later. Meanwhile the miners are using their equipment to dig out the bunker and once they’re done, we will no longer be outnumbered. We have to wait it out, Clarke.” His voice sounds final, but also weary around the edges. Like he’d been going over this again and again. Like the bunker outweighed the valley, come hell or high water and that was that. “If we act too soon, too impulsive, she’s going to send the rest of her people down and obliterate us—”

We?

Six years. 2199 days.

At least four of those years, Clarke has spent without tears. Without nightmares keeping her up every night. It’d been a while since she’d been this stressed, since she had felt this uneasy in her own skin. Every look, every word directed her way, it set her entire body on edge. She feels restless in his company, and she doesn’t quite know why. She used to be able to read him so well, and a naive part of her thought everything would just go back to the way it was. Even after six years had passed. Two weeks, and she’s always on the verge of crying now, spending most of her nights awake.

“Maybe we just can’t do this anymore, you know,” Clarke blurts out, cutting him off as she finally stops walking. They’ve been fighting about everything. There’s a draw of breath between the two of them, and then for clarification or maybe just some sick sadistic ploy to hurt him like he's hurt her, “Together.”

A word that used to mean so much between the two of them, everything really, and now just hurts. Maybe they’re not who they used to be. Maybe they don’t have to be. Maybe that’s okay. She doesn’t know who he is now, and he doesn’t know her, not really, not anymore, so maybe they should stop pretending this—this thing between them—still works. Maybe over the years, she built it up, romanticized it, to be something more than it ever even was to begin with.

He just blinks at her, expression not changing except for a slight furrow in his brows while Clarke keeps talking. For if she stops, she might not have the courage to ever breach the subject again. "We should just divide and conquer. You’re in charge of rationing and I’ll take care of—"

Finally, Bellamy snaps, cutting her off. His face is hard, completely unreadable. His voice shakes just slightly, one hand hovering in the air like he's afraid he might have to reach out and keep her in place, like she might start running at the admission. "I thought you were dead."

"So did I," she defends herself, her voice raw and exasperated, taken back for a second. Her pulse's a gallop. She doesn’t know why he wants to do this now, dig this back up when she buried it so deep for a reason. And anger is easy, anger she can do, has been doing for the past two weeks.

"You didn’t know if we were alive,” he growls, but it's without any real heat. A bead of sweat trails down his temple. His voice cracks when he adds, rough, “There's a difference."

She had hope.

“You had them," she counters, shaking her head slightly, but which each word she sounds less sure of herself, which each word she is closer to tears. "Raven, and Monty, and Harper, and Murphy. You even got Emori. And you and Echo—”

“Are just friends," he grunts, brow furrowing together above his stern gaze. 

“Friends?” She scoffs, and there it is again, that red, hot feeling spreading from her chest to her fingertips, like subdued thunder wanting to break free, lighting up each and every cell in her body. Anger. Her voice gets louder and louder. “After all the things she did? Forget about what she did to me. What about your sister, you? The people in Mount Weather who she—”

“It’s been six years, Clarke," he barks, cutting her off and maybe he's angry, too. "A lot’s changed. I had no choice. We only had each other up there.”

There's always a fucking choice. She takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself before she says something she might regret. Tilting her head to look at him directly in the face, make sure she heard him right, that she gets what he's implying. “And you blame _me_ for that? I never _chose_ to stay behind, Bellamy. I never—”

“Didn’t you?” He breathes, gravelly, and it hits her like a brick in the chest, breaking all of her carefully built up defenses, shattering them like glass. Hadn't they, once upon a time, agreed to never think of each other like this, to never speak something like this into existence, decided that them being leaders was more important than their feelings, whatever those feelings were, an unspoken agreement?

 She swallows tight, searching his brown eyes, devoid of any of the warmth she could never quite get right in any of her drawings. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He turns on his heel for just a moment, pressing his finger and thumb into his eye-sockets, like he's trying to keep from yelling at her. Then he pivots back, staring up at the sky like he can't get himself to look at her, like the memory's too painful. “I kept playing it over, and over, and _over_ in my head. That whole speech about using my head?" He shakes his head, lightly, then finally meets her gaze. "You were never coming with us. You were saying goodbye.”

“That had nothing to do with you!" She pleads, erratic almost. How is his version of events so different from hers? She never used to have to tell him these things, he used to just understand. Then again, maybe they just weren't on the same page anymore. After two apocalypses and six years on an abandoned planet with just a child as company, maybe she was finally ready to risk it. Maybe he wasn't. "It didn’t. I didn’t feel like I deserved that. A second chance. Hell down here, I was ready to give up, ready to d—” Something dark flashes across his eyes, like he would go back in time to yell at her for ever thinking about dying, so she swallows the word down. “Until I found Madi.”

“I was never going to be enough, was I?” He says, so low she would have missed it had she not been so focused on every movement he made. He scrubs a hand over his face, stumbling a little on his feet, then finds support on a tree. He sinks down until he's resting against it on the ground, long limbs stretched out.

After a moment of doubt, she tentatively sits down beside him, her shoulder brushing hiss. He leans his head back against the tree, his shirt sticking to his skin from the heat as he stares back up at the blue sky, not a cloud in sight. His freckles have become more apparent these last few weeks, from all the sun. His hair is longer, less curly, but still messy as ever. The scar on his lip is still there, too, but it's covered by his beard. It's probably some really fucked up metaphor she can't wrap her head around right now.

All of this vaguely reminds her of a moment lost in time, a moment that felt like from a different lifetime. The day trip they took, when they first came down to earth. So much had happened since then, so much had changed. But change had always been inevitable. Maybe that Clarke wasn't supposed to be with that Bellamy. Maybe this version of her was finally right for the version he was then. Maybe they missed their window, or, maybe it will take them a while to find each other again, to be right for each other again.  

After the second apocalypse, it took Clarke years to patch herself back up, get her shit back together. The radio calls helped, helped her hold on to the person she used to be. For Madi, she had to be someone else. Madi became her entire world over the span of six years, it's hard to fit anyone back in it in just a few weeks. But he's here now, alive, and they have time. Which is more than she could've said half a month ago.

"I'm sorry," she mutters, and it might be her imagination that his breath hitches in the back of his throat. "I called you on the radio every day, to try and say what I couldn't before you left. There's a lot. But, mostly—it's that I'm sorry. I wanted to chose you—" He turns his head to look at her, and she clears her throat lightly. "And Raven, and the others, but I couldn't. You did what you had to do." She swallows, heavy, then wets her lips. "I'm sorry I made you leave me behind."

"I'm sorry I couldn't stay," he says, eventually, dropping his hand down onto the ground, like an invitation. A peace offering of sorts. His voice is laced with guilt, but not fresh, more like a sort of remorse you're looking back on now that you know better. "But I think Madi needed you more."

It wasn't like Clarke had felt unhappy all this time. She and Madi, they made a life for themselves. But you can be content, and still feel homeless. Like a part of you is missing. She reaches out to cover his palm with hers, fingers intertwining with his. "You're home now."

**Author's Note:**

> COMMENT AND KUDO THANK U,, NEXT  
> and/or hmu [here](http://www.captaindaddykru.tumblr.com) or [here](http://www.twitter.com/captaindaddykru) if you want to yell at me, prompt me or rehash jacob vs edward now that tw*light is relevant again and end the battle once and for all


End file.
